
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, October 11, 1995                   TAG: 9510110098
SECTION: BUSINESS                    PAGE: B7   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: BELLEVUE, WASH.                                 LENGTH: Medium

GATES' COMPANY BUYS BETTMAN ARCHIVE

Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates' privately held digital media company said Tuesday that it has bought The Bettman Archive, one of the world's largest photo collections.

Corbis Corp. made the deal for an undisclosed amount, giving Gates control of Bettman's 16 million images, including decades of photos by United Press International. The software billionaire plans to use and license the images in computer programs and online systems.

Bettmann had been owned by the Kraus Organization Ltd., a private company in New York. It purchased more than 11 million UPI photos in 1990, including the famous shot of ironworkers eating lunch while perched on a beam high above the New York City skyline during construction of the RCA building in Rockefeller Center in 1932.

Gates started Corbis in 1989 to acquire photographs, artwork and other published works for use in software and other digital outlets. It remains privately held and does not report financial results.

The company has chiefly operated like a photo agency, similar to Bettmann but with a computer-age twist. It buys photographs from professional photographers and sells them to others but only in digital form, delivered on diskette or online.

The Bettmann Archive isn't nearly as far along changing to computerized storage and delivery of photos as Corbis.

While the photos owned by agencies such as Bettmann and Corbis are chiefly sold or licensed to businesses, the growth of electronic publishing - reflected in the spread of laser-printed newsletters, 'zines and World Wide Web pages - has raised the likelihood that consumers will be interested in them, particularly if access is easy and pricing reduced.

Already, several online services provide small libraries of images that customers can download.

Gates himself aims to demonstrate a potential use for such images with the new home he is building in suburban Seattle. It is to be equipped with flat screens of various sizes that can display art works and images stored in a personal computer.

by CNB